


The Shepherd

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: Angst, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Reconciliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-02-20
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:39:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6064189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rand al'Thor struggles to remember who he is; is the Dragon Reborn all that remains of him?  Tam al'Thor receives a familiar visitor in the night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shepherd

**Author's Note:**

> Currently rereading WoT now that all the books are out. I haven’t read 12-14 yet, so if this happens I’ll feel like a real goose, but from what I remember of my previous reading of 1-11, Rand and Tam do not speak again after Eye of the World. I thought that was a goddamn travesty. If it does happen, I'd love to not be spoiled :) 
> 
> So here it is, my version of the al’Thors reunited, set sometime after the attacks on Emond’s Field, around books 8-9. (It’s angst. Let’s be real, it’s so much angst. It’s _Rand_ , for Light's sake.)

Tam woke slowly at first, then came back to himself with a rush.  There was someone rapping, hard, at the door, their fist sharp against the wood.  The sound carried even through the rain against the roof.

He considered.  He had heard no horn blow, no shouts of warning from the village; would an attacker knock so insistently?  No, they would just as soon smash through the porch and the front door.  Wood would be little deterrent if someone truly wanted in, and one weary farmer and his walking stick would not stop them.

Tam gritted his teeth, reached for his walking stick that rested beside his bedside table, and carefully got to his feet, shoving the covers aside.  Nothing good came from a knock this late at night, and his stomach felt heavy with a sick, familiar sense of dread.  Nothing could be counted on anymore, these days; not a good night’s rest, not a safe place in the world.  Emond’s Field would never feel truly safe again, he thought.

The knocking stuttered, as if the knocker had heard him coming; Tam felt it unlikely, for despite his reliance on his cane, he was still soft-footed, too many years of memory keeping his steps quiet when he wanted them that way, even if his bad leg protested.  And there was the rain besides; that should mask much of his approach.  Tam edged into the front room, willing himself to stay quiet, staring in the dark where he knew the gap in the curtains to be.  He could see no torchlight flickering through the gap, though it did nothing to ease the dread.  Trollocs had no need of torches to see in the dark.

His footsteps, as soft and careful as he could make them with the cane, brought him to the door.  He lifted the cane, held it as he would a short staff.  One more knock amid the rain.  Then a voice, hoarse, from the dark.  “It’s – it’s me.”

_Rand._

Tam nearly fell over where he stood.  How long had it been?  Years, now, full years.  Light, so much had changed – _everything_ – but no matter what their blood, no matter what the world had done, he could not leave Rand out in the rain.  Tam’s fingers fumbled on the locks, and he pulled the door open.  

Light flared from somewhere, blinding him.  Where had that lantern come from?  He would have seen its glow from the window, and no one could strike flint to tinder so quickly –

He squinted, letting his eyes adjust.  His hand trembled on the handle of his cane when he realized.  Fire danced in Rand’s hands, naked flame bereft of lantern or torch.   A flicker of motion from Rand’s fingers, and the flame parted, split, found new homes in the lanterns Tam had in the front room.  Light sprang up around them despite the cold wind and the rain blowing inward through the open door, and Tam struggled not to cry out with a long-held fear. _Channeling_.

He shook his head.  He had known that much for some time now.  He should not have been surprised, especially when Rand had limited it to such a little thing, but it was also _not_ a little thing.  A man channeling the One Power… it would never be a little thing.  He fought back those thoughts, and he looked on his son.

The Dragon Reborn.

It was the name the people gave him, the name he took; the stories changed so many times as to which was true.  He was tall, might have even grown a little since last Tam had seen him, and there was steel in the way he stood.  His reddish hair was mussed, his cheeks sharp; any last bit of childhood had left his face long before.  His grey eyes were shadowed.  He looked the Aiel more than ever, and Tam wondered that everyone in Emond’s Field had not seen it before.  Of course, Tam was the only one of them who had ever seen an Aiel.

There were new lines to Rand’s face, new angles carved by trials Tam did not dare imagine.  A jacket in brilliant, silken scarlet, with sinuous golden forms twining around the collar, was worth more than Tam’s house.  It might have looked ludicrous on Rand in years past, but it fit, now; in fact, it seemed almost plain on him.  Tam frowned.  Something was wrong with the jacket, he realized.

Tam cleared his throat.  It wasn’t the right thing to say, after all this time, but he said it anyway.  “You aren’t wet.  From the rain.”

Rand was stiff, unexpectedly almost shy as he crossed the threshold into the room, closing the door behind him to cut off the draft and the smell of rain.  “I did not ride.  Or walk,” he said awkwardly, and Tam decided it was best not to ask.

“I see,” he said, and the silence filled the space between them.  A thousand things to say passed through his mind, and he did not know how to say a one.

“I’m sorry,” Rand said suddenly.  His hand went to his side, and for the first time Tam noticed the heron-mark blade, looking as if it belonged.  Rand drew the blade from its scabbard, revealing that it was broken a foot from the hilt.  “I could not bring it back to you, Fa –”  He stumbled over the word.  “Tam.”

The sound of his own name from Rand’s mouth wounded him far more than the broken sword.  “It was yours to use,” Tam said, pretending as if he had not noticed.  “Freely given.  I’m sure you didn’t break it climbing trees or showing off.”  He tried to laugh, thinking of Rand in his fine scarlet jacket trying to show off for a girl.  It was foolish, nothing he could see the Dragon Reborn doing.

Something akin to a smile flitted across Rand’s face, looking unfamiliar there for a moment before it settled.  “No,” he confessed.  “No, it was a better reason than that.”  He shivered, despite the smile, and unconsciously smoothed his jacket over his side.

He caught sight of Tam’s cane, and his face shifted into a look of worry.  “Your leg!  It never healed right, then?” he asked, brows knitting together in concern.  “You must sit.”

“I’ll sit if I want, and stand if I want,” said Tam, though his leg was beginning to protest at standing for so long, especially after forcing his footsteps to be so quiet earlier.  It had put more of a strain on him than he wanted to admit.

This time the smile on Rand’s face was more like what Tam remembered.  For a moment his face looked open, the way it used to.  “You stubborn old man,” Rand said.  “I don’t think you’ve changed a bit.”

Tam laughed.  “I see you haven’t outgrown a bit of an ornery streak.  All right, then, sit with me.”  He leaned more heavily on the cane, and pulled out one of the chairs at the table, gesturing for Rand to sit beside him.  Rand took the seat beside him at the small table, the corner between them.

Rand looked even more out of place sitting at the rough-cut farmhouse table than he had standing.  The lights he had lit with _saidin_ cast strange, unsettling shadows on his face.  He set the broken heron-mark blade on the table between them, then looked down at his hands; Tam was startled to see the heron branded on both of his palms.   _How did that – do you really want to know, you old fool?  It’s not for you to know._

“Why are you really here, Rand?” Tam asked him.  He took a deep breath, looking down at his own hands, unmarked with nothing but the normal lines and callouses of a farmer’s life.  The words stuck in his throat, but they were the right ones this time.  “The Dragon Reborn has nations to see to, not one old man’s farmhouse.”

Rand’s hands twisted in front of him, fingers tangling themselves.  Gold and carmine, a rich pattern worked in ink on both of his wrists, peeked beneath the cuffs of his sleeves.  Tam wondered what it was, and why, but did not ask.  Another part of the man Rand was that he was not to know.

“Is that all you think of me, now?” Rand asked, his head ducked low so that Tam could not see his eyes.  It was a habit he had as a little boy, when talking about things that scared him.  Tam had not seen it in many years.  It looked strange on the lordly man in front of him.

“No,” Tam said.  He reached out, held what remained of the heron-mark blade in his hands, carefully avoiding its keen edge.  Even broken, it could still cut a bitter wound.  “I assume you know by now,” he said haltingly, “that there is none of my blood in you.”  

Rand nodded, a curt, tight motion.  “Ever since Bel Tine, and the Trollocs.  You spoke in your fever-dreams.  I – hoped, for a long time, that it was not true.”

Tam sighed.  He had guessed as much, but it still wore on him.  “I never meant you to know,” he said.  “I thought that all you needed to know was that I was your father, no matter what blood said.”

Rand lifted his head.  Dark circles ringed his eyes, and Tam wondered, concerned, if Rand was getting enough to eat.  A stupid question, given his finery, the armies he knew he commanded, and yet he could not deny the hollows in Rand’s cheeks, nor those dark circles beneath his eyes.  “You _were_ my father,” Rand said hastily.

“But I am not now?” Tam asked.  The broken blade was heavy in his hands.

“Light, I –”  Rand looked miserable.  “I came to try and let you _go_ , Tam, to release you from whatever hold on me you still felt.  I’ve brought you and Emond’s Field nothing but destruction.  How could you still want to tie yourself to what I am?  To what I will become?  I am not always myself, not anymore –”  He winced, scrubbing at his face with one hand as if his head pained him.  His voice dropped.  “Tarmon Gai’don comes, and sometimes I don’t know if – if I will make it.  I have to!  I have to stop him!  But will I destroy everything, everyone, the world itself, to get there?  Even if I try to protect them, I am still sometimes – not myself –”  There was a ragged note of hysteria bleeding beneath his words, a raw wound that tore at Tam’s heart.

Tam dropped the blade, ignoring the clatter it made against the table’s surface.  He seized Rand, one hand curled protectively over his shoulder, the other cradling his cheek.  A man who could channel.  Doomed to go mad, to rot while he yet lived.  The Dragon Reborn.  Doomed to save them all, or to die trying.  Rand _was_ these things, they were laid upon him, that could not be changed; but still, he was _more_ –

Rand stared at him, grey eyes wide and red-rimmed, his face pale.  

“You are Rand al’Thor,” Tam said softly.

Rand’s eyes closed, and he leaned against Tam’s hand, taking a deep breath.  “But I am the Dragon,” he whispered.  “Light, I wish it were not so.”

“As do I,” said Tam.  He squeezed Rand’s shoulder, and Rand’s hand came up to grip his arm.  He could almost feel the heron scar against his skin, but he did not recoil.  “You are the Dragon,” he admitted.  “But you are still Rand al’Thor.  And though it may be men, and nations, that you now lead… you are still a shepherd, son.”  His voice cracked, and he swallowed against the lump in his throat.

Rand’s chair scraped the ground as he pulled Tam into a rough embrace, his arms tight around his father.  Tam held him back as tightly, his face pressed against Rand’s as he closed his eyes.  His cheek was wet.  He did not know if it was him, or Rand, who wept.  It did not matter.  It only mattered that he held his son again.

**Author's Note:**

> Rand's longing to be a shepherd again in The Dragon Reborn and The Shadow Rising just... KILLS... me... ;_; My sorrow is infinite.
> 
> I've not written in this fandom before and probably won't make a habit of it; I do see it's not exactly the most prolific fandom here on AO3, so I do rather expect to be tossing this into the void. Given that, if you liked this, give me a holler. Mostly I just really wanted to see this chapter!


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